The clinic benefit of dental flossing is well known. If you live in the United States, the most frequent advice you may get from your dentist is to floss once a day. Traditional manual flossing is, however, time consuming and less effective. Besides, many of us find manual flossing too difficult to manipulate.
Automatic flosser, i.e. automatic dental flossing device, has been the subject of numerous of patents; some of them are listed as references in this application. However, automatic flossers have so far very limited acceptance in the market place.
There are two obvious obstacles for broad market acceptance of automatic flossers. First, substantial learning time is usually required for one to become familiar with manipulation of an automatic flosser and to see its benefit. Actually, dental flossing is never an easy job for most of us. Any new flosser or new flossing procedure will take time and practice for one to learn.
Second, commercially available automatic flossers are typically sold for $30 to $80 per unit in the US market. These prices are some 10 to 50 times of what one may spend for dental floss or manual flossers. Because the usefulness and benefit of a new automatic flosser are usually not obvious, not many customers are likely to pay $30 to $80 to try something new but uncertain.
In comparison, automatic toothbrushes have found their way to gain popularity in the past several years. Automatic toothbrushes were used to sell for some $30 to $80 per unit in the US market and had rather limited popularity. The market of automatic toothbrushes has become flourishing since Crest introduced its SpinBrush sold for about $5 each.